lready
succeeded in smearing his fingers with grease within three minutes of
becoming a Chevalier.

"Fact is, ma'am," he answered, "it is my car, in a way. You see, my
mother's name is Hilda, same as yours. My mother, she gave half-a-crown
for it."

WITH THE AMBULANCE

We were carrying a dead man among the living.

"Take him out and leave him," ordered our officer; "it is
bad for the wounded men riding next to him and under him."

We lifted him down from his swinging perch in the car. He
was heavy at the shoulders to shift. The dead seem heavier
than the quick. We stretched him at full length in the
sticky mud of the gutter at the side of the road. He lay
there, white face and wide eyes in the night, as if frozen
in his pain. Soldiers, stumbling to their supper, brushed
against his stiff body and then swerved when they saw the
thing which they had touched. A group of doctors and
officers moved away. Mud from the sloughing tires of the
transports spattered him, but not enough to cover him. No
one had time to give him his resting-place. We were too busy
with the fresher shambles, and their incompleted products,
to pause for a piece of work so finished as that cold
corpse.

But no indignity of the roadway can long withhold him from
his portion of peace, and the land that awakened his courage
will receive him at last. There is more companionship under
the ground than above it for one who has been gallant
against odds.

VII

THE AMERICAN

"Atrocities, rubbish!" said the man. "A few drunken soldiers, yes. Every
war has had them. But that's nothing. They're all a bunch of crazy
children, both sides, and pretty soon they'll quiet down. In the
meantime," he added with a smile, "we take the profits--some of us, that
is."

"Is that all the war means to you?" asked Hilda.

"Yes, and to any sensible person," replied he. "Why do you want to go
and get yourself mixed up in it? An American belongs out of it. Go and
work in a settlement at home and let the foreign countries stew in their
own juice."

"Belgium doesn't seem like a foreign country to me," returned the girl.
"You see, I know the people. I know young Lieutenant Robert de
Broqueville and Commandant Gilson, with the wound on his face, and the
boys that come into the Flandria Hospital with their fingers shot away.
They are like members of my family. Th